I had such plans. Following yesterday’s interest rate rise and more hawkish messaging from the Monetary Policy Committee, I was going to write about inflation, set to peak at north of 4% next year, fully twice the Bank of England’s target.
And — in a world-first — I was going to do so without quoting Milton Friedman’s “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” adage. In its stead, there was going to be Keith Joseph, Lord Hailsham and, purely as a flex, Isaiah Berlin.
But then the clocks struck Friday and I was knee deep in Google reverse image searches for contemporary (and copyright-free) pictures of Andrew Bailey — that is, after the weight loss — when I abruptly shut the laptop, like Gordon Brown on a Zoom interview. Surely no one wants this?
The weekend has started, the northern hemisphere has been plunged into premature darkness and the Russians are engaging in something more than ‘hybrid’ war against Europe (and, indeed, Canada).
Friday afternoon work gets a bad rap. Think Old Testament god, after a long week of creating the heavens and the Earth, thinking up vegetables to bury underground, stumbling across iceberg lettuce and going, yeah, that’ll do. Or the US Founding Fathers looking at a Senate of even numbers and deciding, hmm, we’d all like to knock off early to our plantations, shall we just give the vice-president — a member of the executive branch — the power to break a tie?1
Point being, let’s save our deep dive into the peculiarities of the consumer prices index for next week, when the subject will no doubt command even greater salience, given my back-of-a-fag-packet calculations which suggest that, from a typical £100 basket of goods, prices get just under 1p dearer per day.
In lieu, a few treats to tide you over, including some books, videos and podcasts I absolutely hated — and which I hope you will too.